


I Died a Thousand Deaths

by I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Beheading, Death, Found Family, Gen, Graphic Torture, Gratuitous Violence, Gruesome deaths, Horror, M/M, Murder, Probably an Unhappy Ending But it's not Written Yet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-29 08:54:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12627429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning/pseuds/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning
Summary: Vader needs revenge against Obi-Wan Kenobi. It's not something he can afford to mess up, so practicing seems like his best option. For ten years Obi-Wan has been locked up, unaware Vader has been drafting plan after plan after plan.But the clones are old enough to look like him now, even if they don't have the lines age and grief have carved into Obi-Wan's forehead and eyes...And Vader can't wait a second longer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one is going to be very, very, very uncomfortable. The whole point of it is for Vader to be slaughtering Obi-Wan clones in increasingly more vicious ways, and mind trauma the clones and Obi-Wan himself experience through it all. And yes, the fact of accelerated growth means they're "adult" but as far as Obi-Wan is concerned, they're really, really not.
> 
> The odds of a happy ending are staggeringly small.
> 
> Because I only have three chapters written, I can't fully fill out the tags yet, and the list would be very large. I'm considering putting the warnings in the author notes before each chapter.

 

Obi-Wan awoke to a scream. Harsh. Rasping.

He bolted out of bed and down the hall, around the corner onto the balcony of the sparring room—

And froze at what he saw.

Vader looked up at him and smiled. Fangs and jaundiced eyes.

And on his knees before him was—

Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He heard the man screaming, a wordless cry for mercy in his pain.

And then a bloodshine blade was dragged carelessly across his neck—

The body shuddered and fell, thrashing as the final impulses raced through the headless torso.

The murder sent a pulse of darkness through the force, punching Obi-Wan in the chest.

It took but a moment for Vader to spring to the balcony, clearing the railing to stand beside the man he had betrayed ten years ago.

Obi-Wan couldn't bring himself to look into the face of the Sith who looked like his brother. “What have you  _done_ ?”

“I avenged myself on you,” was the satisfied reply. “And yet you are still alive.”

“You  _cloned_ me and then killed the clone?” Obi-Wan whispered, the realization somehow too vast to fully comprehend.

Vader's smile widened. “And then killed  _a_ clone.”

Burning ice surged down Obi-Wan's back. “You  _didn't—_ ”

“Oh, but  _Master._ I couldn't make up my mind how best to punish you. And once I did, it would be  _over,_ with no chance to try again. It won't be a problem now.”

Obi-Wan's gaze snapped to his eyes, horror flooding his system. “They're not  _me,_ Anakin—”

Black-gloved durasteel seized his throat, squeezing just lightly, not enough to damage, but plenty enough to claim possession.

“What have I said about using that name?” the Sith purred.

“Vape you.” Obi-Wan's voice might be strained, hoarse, but the venom in his eyes could not be denied.

Vader shrugged and released him. “What can I say? The thrill of killing you was... exquisite.”

“You of all people are highly aware of the fact that a clone is  _not_ the original. Every version you make of my body will have its  _own_ personality, its  _own_ Force-signature, its  _own—_ ”

The smile returned, and Vader lightly dragged his fingers along Obi-Wan's shoulder before dropping the hand to the balcony's railing and looking down at the now-still body. “So much the sweeter. They look at me with your eyes, they scream at me with your voice, and they  _beg_ me in a way you never would.”

“They are  _innocent,_ Ana— they are  _innocent._ Your quarrel is with  _me. I'm_ the one who has wronged you—”

“Yes,” he hissed, eyes gleaming. “And  _they_ will pay the price.”

“Where are you keeping them?”

Vader chuckled. “So you can launch a rescue mission? How about instead I leave you alone with the body, and you can decide what you're going to do with them as they drop.”

For long moments after Vader left, Obi-Wan stood, staring at the wall, unable to bring himself to look to the corpse. The fear in this room, the pain—

His own flesh and blood.

A terrible thought whispered into his soul, breathing death along its path.

_I have a son. And he's dead._

Obi-Wan fled to the corpse, dropping to his knees beside it and reaching out an anguished hand for the still shoulder.

_No. No. There is nothing I could have done to keep my DNA out of his hands. These poor children are not mine._

But he recognized the terrified emptiness in a face that looked twenty but had only lived for ten years.

He pressed his fist to his lips to suppress the sob that tore through his throat.

Without love, born to die, suffering for a vendetta not their own, denied their childhood, denied their life, denied  _everything._

He found a still, cold hand and held it both his own.

_If they don't have me, they have nothing._

He had not asked for sons.

_But to deny them is to try to save my feelings at the cost of their own._

He remembered the bond between the clones he'd worked alongside in the Clone Wars, the love they had for one another.

_No one could deny they were brothers._

_I will fight for you,_ he promised the children suddenly entrusted to him.  _I've had ten years of trying to escape this place and I have never come close to succeeding. But I will try again. And again. And again, and I will do whatever I can to save as many of you as I can, and if I can't, I will give my life to making sure you know you are loved._

If only for a day.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Child fear. Children caged to be killed later. Breaking Bones. Murder. Helplessness. Hopelessness. Death viewed as an escape. The warning I put at the beginning of this story? This was the chapter I was thinking of in particular when I wrote it.

 

 

He huddled with his brothers, waiting for the catlike footfalls that would announce _him_ back here, ready to take another of them away.

There would be screams, horrible screams, perhaps for hours, and then silence.

They would never see the one taken ever again.

He shook, so afraid, he'd never known a time when he wasn't sick with dread.

Soon. Any second now, it would be time for the taker to be here again.

“It's going to be me this time, isn't it,” he choked, wanting to be brave— he was ten, damn it, not one of the five-year-old brothers who sobbed themselves to sleep once they realized what was happening.

The brother closest to him reached out and gripped his hands, and they found the same terror mirrored in one another's eyes.

No one spoke after that.

Instead, they waited.

When the door opened, breaths were dragged in as chins came up, trying to face the end well, they wanted to die well—

The killer stepped in, and after him, footsteps hesitant, came—

_One of us?_

But this was a brother they didn't know. And he wasn't... he looked...

Is that what they would look like, if they ever lived past ten years?

“It's him,” someone behind whispered.

He closed his eyes to avoid the gaze of the older “brother,” suddenly understanding.

_He's sick, and we're spare parts._

_He's here to pick which one to take next._

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan hadn't expected Vader to agree to allow him to see them.

And then he'd braced himself to enter a room where many of them lay _dead—_

But it appeared Vader had actually meant what he said.

The instant he stepped foot in the room Obi-Wan froze, staring at desperate gray eyes.

And then young minds were reaching out, trying to discover what terrible things he was going to do to them; untrained, pain-laced brushes as they reached for him in the Force.

His stomach rolled, his heart broke, his knees gave out—

Kneeling there, he stared back at them.

_Dear Force._

Tears fled down his cheeks as he held out his hands. “I'm so sorry,” he choked. “I'm _so sorry_.”

And then he was sobbing, head hung as his soul shattered.

After a moment he found himself surrounded, legs pressing into his back and arms, hands reaching out to touch his head, his shoulders.

He looked up through the tears, found them huddled around him, trying to offer comfort.

“Why?” one asked.

And he could not bring himself to lie to children about their own deaths. “Vader hates me,” he choked. “He wants to hurt and kill me, but he doesn't want me to escape. If I die, then he can't hurt me anymore. He made you so he can hurt and kill you, and still keep me.” His voice broke into something torn.

He waited for the anger at the injustice of it, waited for their hate.

“Are you our dad?” one of them asked, looking so young, so afraid.

“Yes.”

He sensed Vader's surprise beside him, but it meant nothing.

_All that matters is you, precious one._

And then the boy who'd asked was on his knees, reaching out to hug him, and Obi-Wan held him close, pressing his face into his neck and cradling his head.

The embrace was fierce, Obi-Wan nearly fearing he would harm the child by how tightly he held him, but the boy squeezed him even _more_ tightly, their tears mingling.

Vader tore him from Obi-Wan's arms, and the Jedi sprang up, near-mad with grief. “No, _please, no—_ please, _Anakin_ , I'm begging you, what do you want, I'll _do_ it—”

Vader struck him hard, throwing him to the floor again, but he was back up, striking back, struggling to fight through the strategic, surgical damage Vader had ordered when he'd first been captured.

The injuries that kept him from striking or kicking hard enough to do damage— he couldn't move his arm that way anymore, his leg—

The muscle damage wasn't the only gift designed to keep him from injuring his captor. When he tried to fight through the destroyed joints and tendons, the exaggerated motions it required to compensate triggered a vertigo he'd never used to possess.

The drugs that allowed him to feel the Force but left him too clumsy to manipulate it flickered through his brain, leaving him with only the most primal of human defense.

He drove his fingers for Vader's eyes. When the Sith easily caught his hand, Obi-Wan sank his teeth as deep into Vader's wrist as he could, trying to cut, tear, _destroy—_

The Sith yelled, striking Obi-Wan's head but the Jedi only reached up for his eyes again, but his shoulder glitched and his hand spasmed, helpless.

Vader struck him again, again—

Obi-Wan found himself reeling away, held up by many hands as Vader stormed out the door with the child. “Watch their eyes as they hear what happens to this one.”

Obi-Wan crashed into the closed door, keying it, but it was locked.

“ _Please_ ,” he screamed through the wall. “ _Please—!_ ”

And then an answering scream shattered through the room.

Obi-Wan's soul collapsed as he sobbed, hearing terrible noises driving through the door.

A face pressed into his back, tears burning through his tunic to scald his skin. A hand found his, squeezed it so tightly the bones threatened to break.

A child who looked grown tugged on his hand and he looked over into young gray eyes from which tears were silently falling. “Be brave,” the clone whispered. “Be brave.”

Obi-Wan smoothed the child's hair with a war-scarred hand and stared into those eyes. “I cannot.” Another scream, another wet snapping of bone. Obi-Wan keened, low in his throat.

“You said the one called Vader can't kill you because that would free you,” the boy whispered. “All we have to do is endure until we escape.”  
Obi-Wan dragged in a ragged breath. “I cannot save you. I cannot get you out of here.”  
“We know. That's why you have to be brave.”

_Never once have they been able to fight back._

Such utter helplessness was new to Obi-Wan, but not to his clones.

He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the boy's forehead, closing his eyes as one final groan choked out on the other side of the door, followed by a punch into Obi-Wan's heart, the Force emptier for the loss.

“It's over,” the child whispered. “He's free.”

* * *

 

He'd been terrified when Vader took him.

But he'd _known._

That's what had granted him the boldness to hug the original.

He felt Obi-Wan's arms still strong around him as he was dragged out the door.

Kenobi had said something he hadn't known before.

He'd described death as freedom.

Maybe— maybe that wasn't so bad.

_I'm almost out of here._

When Vader— now he new the taker's name— drew back his metal fist, the boy raised his chin, squared his shoulders, and closed his eyes, thinking of heaven.

He'd been there.

For a heartbeat, for an eternity, he'd been there, surrounded by a love that seemed greater than all the oceans in the galaxy.

He'd experienced one glimmer of light, one moment of happiness, one moment when something was stronger, warmer, deeper than the fear.

Nothing Vader did could take that away.

The pain was beyond anything he could have imagined. Vader's eyes were alight with such utter hatred—

But man he'd just met was weeping for him.

A wondering smile touched the clone's face.

_I'm important to someone who isn't going to die in the next week. I have value._

_I'm going to be remembered._

Another strike, he groaned.

_I'm ten years old. I never did anything to you._

The man before him was not a man at all, but something unhinged.

_If I must suffer and die for something, I'm proud it's to be your son, Dad._

The young man had never felt proud of anything before. But one last time he looked up into hungry yellow eyes and smiled.

_I am Kenobi's Son._

 


End file.
